'Isnt' It Romantic?', With Billy De Wolfe and Veronica Lake, Arrives at Paramount

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A formless and rambling musical, which looks as though it were made with at least a half dozen previous musical successes in mind, is Paramount's "Isn't It Romantic?" which came to the Paramount Theatre yesterday. The funny thing is it bears no likeness to a musical success itself.Sometimes it looks as though the authors of this frivolous charade were thinking of "Meet Me in St. Louis" when they labored to bring it forth. That's when its brood of sweet young ladies in Gibson Girl costumes is buzzing around the family kitchen or chaffing one another about boys. Then it looks as though somebody remembered "Four Daughters" of some years back and decided to toss a little of that one's plot into the stew. Again it looks as though Director Norman McLeod recalled (and tried to imitate) a couple of routines from a Crosby-Hope "Road" show. Here and there it gives inklings of a rah-rah college musical, and it finally dissolves in the reflection of a "Strawberry Blonde" memory.Being so random and uneven in telling its artificial tale of the depredations of a swindler upon a household of innocent girls, this mélange of music and malarky almost entirely depends for its meager fascinations upon a couple of sequences and scenes. A shamelessly knockabout number in which Billy De Wolfe, Veronica Lake and Mona Freeman give a demonstration of nickelodeon cliches, is broad-beamed but generally amusing, and a song called "Miss Julie July" is pleasantly melodic and rather nicely sung. A saucy solo by Pearl Bailey, "I Shoulda Quit When I Was Ahead," is also mildly fetching, though completely out of place.In these circumstances, the actors are at the mercy of their material. Miss Lake and Miss Freeman suffer and an Englishman named Roland Culver acts a dunce as their Southern-bred father. Richard Webb and Mary Hatcher are likewise foolish as romantic kids and Patric Knowles is utterly plowed under as the dandified villain in the piece. But Mr. De Wolfe is nothing daunted. He rips up the place with great delight. The material is at his mercy. Likewise the scenery. And he chews it to bits.Two things, we'd say, are significant in a just appraisal of this film. It was NOT made in Technicolor, the usual protective of such shows. And the biggest laugh in the picture comes when a little boy throws a firecracker in a bass horn at a picnic. Judge for yourself.On the stage at the Paramount are Erskine Hawking and his Orchestra, with Savannah Churchill, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Howell and Bowser and Bunny Briggs.

A version of this review appears in print on October 7, 1948 of the National edition with the headline: 'Isnt' It Romantic?', With Billy De Wolfe and Veronica Lake, Arrives at Paramount. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe